Iconic ‘Strat’ still strutting — even at age 60

By randy lewis
mcclatchy-tribune

Published: February 27, 2014;Last modified: February 27, 2014 05:00AM

Rock guitar hero Jeff Beck remembers falling in love for the first time.

“I’d only ever seen Spanish-style or jazz guitars, and then I saw a Stratocaster,” said Beck, 69, of his schoolboy crush. “I was fascinated by the shape, the double cutaways; it was all too cool. It had all these pickups and knobs and controls — it embodied all the excitement of modern living.

“A few years later I saw one in London hanging in a window, and the guy let me try it on,” said the former member of the Yardbirds. “It fit me like it was made for me. That was it — we were married. I thought ‘This is it,’ and I never forgot it.”

Virtually all musicians have a similar story surrounding their first high-quality instrument, and for many guitarists, that tender memory revolves around the Stratocaster.

The Strat, which was created by electric guitar innovator Leo Fender in his Fullerton, Calif., workshop, turns 60 this year.

“I don’t think there was ever one soloist or instrumentalist that didn’t at some point have their sights set on a Strat, including me and everybody I knew,” said ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons, whose solo on “La Grange” was played on one. “The Strat is really the global cornerstone, the reference point of the perception of the contemporary electric guitar.”

Perfect debut

Buddy Holly became the first major rock star to adopt the Strat as his career took off in the mid-1950s. It features prominently on the cover of his 1957 debut album, “The ‘Chirping’ Crickets,” inspiring legions of followers to covet his guitar.

“It came out perfected, and ever since then we’ve been trying to copy it, improve it, enhance it,” said Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, who admires Strats even though he usually plays Fender Telecasters, the Strat’s older sibling. “Most things get better over time, but not in this case. Leo did it all in one fell swoop, which is amazing.”

The Strat’s main rival for supremacy among rock guitar players is Gibson’s Les Paul, named for, although not designed by, another celebrated technology experimenter. It was introduced by Gibson in 1952, in response to Leo Fender’s success with the Telecaster, which debuted in 1951.

Affordable, too

Fender’s genius stroke was creating a quality instrument that could be mass-produced and still be affordable. For that he’s often lauded as the Thomas Edison and Henry Ford of the musical instrument world.

New Stratocasters manufactured at Fender’s Corona, Calif., plant retail for about $1,300 and up. Cheaper versions manufactured in Mexico and Asia start around $500. Vintage models from the 1950s and early 1960s fetch tens of thousands of dollars at auctions. The Guitar Center paid close to $1 million for Clapton’s celebrated “Blackie” Strat a few years ago.

Larry Thomas, Fender’s chief executive since 2010 and former head of the Guitar Center chain of retail stores, has seen that principle in action from two sides of the business.

“The whole thing is about aspiration and inspiration,” said Thomas. “People would come into Guitar Center to buy an instrument because they were in awe of some guy who was their idol. When you sold a Strat, people wanted to sound like Stevie Ray Vaughan, or they wanted to sound like Eric Clapton.”

The same is true for those at the top of the guitar-food chain.

“The first time I saw one,” Clapton said, “was in the Jerry Lee Lewis footage from (the 1958 film) ‘High School Confidential!’ His bass player was playing a Fender Jazz bass or a Tele bass, and I’d never seen anything like a solid-body guitar before. That was it for me. It was the perfect design. It looked like a spaceship. I loved that about it — it was new and exciting and science fiction.”